Dahomey: A Job with Little Future

Aside from the fact that it was the place where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton filmed Graham Greene’s novel, The Comedians, Dahomey’s chief claim to notoriety is its penchant for coups d’état. Since 1963, the tiny West African state (pop. 2,500,000 in an area of 44,290 sq. mi.) has experienced four coups, all bloodless. Last week Dahomey suffered its fifth coup in six years, but this time the takeover was not bloodless. When President Emile Zinsou, 51, an able, French-trained medical doctor, arrived at his seaside palace in his black Citröen limousine, soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons, wounding him and killing his two bodyguards. Then they bundled Zinsou into a waiting car and disappeared. Eight hours later, Lieut. Colonel Maurice Kouandété, chief of staff of the 1,500-man army, announced that Zinsou had been removed because he “had not fulfilled his mission of national reconciliation.”

Kouandété, 30, is becoming quite a President-maker—and unmaker. He masterminded the 1967 coup against General Christophe Soglo, who had himself overthrown three previous Presidents. Kouandété replaced Soglo with Zinsou, who struggled to overcome Dahomey’s budget deficit of $3,000,000 by cutting government salaries and freezing wages. He succeeded only in setting off a series of strikes. His undoing came when word leaked out that he planned to cut the army’s size and replace Kouandété. Despite the drawbacks of the job, the candidates are already lining up. As soon as Kouandété announced that political exiles were welcome to return home, three exiled ex-Presidents cabled to offer their services.